Yup, Na Koa is still in business, but is the NABL? (UPDATED)

September 28, 2011 - Robert Collias

Updates throughout, not great news out there for the North American Baseball League:

Na Koa Ikaika Maui is making good on its bills from the 2011 season, there is no doubt about that. The independent league baseball team also has a new vice president and general manager in local construction superintendent Dan Partney.

In a smart move — this type of thing should have been done, a lot, over the last couple of years, but wasn't — the team will have a booth at the Maui Fair this week.

One of the big questions for Na Koa — and there are others, trust me — is will the league they played in last season, the North American Baseball League, be viable in 2012?

Omaha only keeps the NABL too far flung, a major hurdle for a league that had to shorten its entire 2011 season by a week this year because of money issues. And the Omaha Flame are locked in a litigation mess themselves with the stadium authority over the use of TD Ameritrade Park, home of the College World Series.

There are some serious consequences here. For starters, the independent North American League needs all the franchises it can get; we're pretty sure the Lake County Fielders won't be back, and there are constant rumblings about other defections as well. The league website lists several new teams for 2012, but some, like the Omaha Flame, are pretty much a pipe dream at this point. There are ten teams in the NAL fold at the moment if you count San Rafael, but that's a little misleading: four of them are Texas teams who did not play against other NAL teams during the 2011 season. The real core of the NAL is down to six teams, and Tucson may be needed to keep things together for 2012.